Monday 28 April 2014 11.26 EDT
First published on Monday 28 April 2014 11.26 EDT

Andy Coulson has denied he ran a "slapdash" and "careless" operation at the News of the World in which police officers were paid for royal directories and home secretaries phones were hacked.

The former editor admitted that he might have been "careless" on occasion, but that this did not amount to being guilty of the criminal charges he is facing in the hacking trial.

The lead prosecutor Anthony Edis QC made the "careless" accusation after the former editor admitted he didn't pay enough attention to emails in which apparent criminal behaviour was being described by his reporters.

The former News of the World editor at the time was told in an email that a story the paper was planning to run on Prince Harry's health had been "scammed from Helen Asprey", the private secretary to Harry and his brother William, and Coulson denied that this was a reference to hacking.

He also denied that emails from his royal reporter Clive Goodman about paying police officers and about the young princes didn't raise "alarm bells" about activities in his newsroom.

Edis put it to him that Coulson had already testified he was a "risk averse" editor.

"Slapdash and careless," he said could be added to that. "Were you a slapdash and careless editor?" Edis said.

"I do not think I was slapdash. I think with hindsight, I displayed some carelessness, I would agree with that," Coulson said.

He is facing three charges in the hacking trial at the Old Bailey, one that he conspired to hack phones and two relating to corrupt payments to public officials. He denies all three charges.

Asked if the admission that he was "careless" was an admission that he "couldn't care less" about illegal activitiy on the paper, Coulson responded: "I do not think it's right to say I didn't care less, but I think on occasion I was careless." He added: "I did my best. Having being presented with all of this [as a result] of this very long investigation, I accept that I did not do enough. It doesn't mean I was party to it," he said.

He was earlier accused of hiding a corrupt payment to a police officer for a royal telephone directory in the "bent system" at the News of the World.

The former tabloid editor has denied sanctioning a payment to a police officer for the confidential internal directories after email requests from his former royal editor.

He told jurors Goodman's request for payment for £750 and a previous one for £1,000 during his editorship was another example of his habit of "exaggerating" his sources and he did not then and does not now believe Goodman's source was a policeman.

With hindsight, Coulson wished he had paid more attention to Goodman's claim that he was paying a public official, but said he didn't pay heed to it because he wouldn't have thought it was true.

He said if he had been the type of journalist who paid police, investigators would have found many more incriminating emails in his inbox.

"There was thousands of emails going in and out of my system, thousands of decisions … If I was a journalist, or if I was an editor who thought it was okay to pay police, you would see tens of thousands of [emails requesting] paying police," he said. "Seriously, you would have found more," he said under cross examination by prosecutor Andrew Edis.

He said the cash payments were a lot of money, but not in the context of the scale of payments the paper would have made to sources for stories.

Coulson said he accepted he "should have looked harder at the provenance" of the royal phone directories.

"Perhaps you should have called the police, should you, do you think looking back?" asked Edis.

"I think if I had called police, based on the fact that I don't believe it was a policeman, I think they would have told me I was wasting my time.

Earlier, he admitted that it was a risk that others were hacking at the News of the World at the time David Blunkett's voicemails were intercepted by his chief reporter.

Under intense questioning from the judge, Coulson said he felt if anyone else was involved in the illegal activity, they would have brought it to his attention.

Seeking clarification to this attitude to hacking when he was told by Neville Thurlbeck of the Blunkett hacking, Mr Justice Saunders asked: "In this particular case, Neville Thurlbeck decided to tell you that he had telephone hacked. As you also said, that's a breach of the editor's code. The editor's code is incorporated in the contracts of journalists. Doing something like that could have ended in his dismissal?"

"Dismissal, no. Disciplinary action, yes," replied Coulson.

"So it looks like Neville Thurlbeck did not take that [PCC editor's code] too seriously," said Saunders. Coulson replied that Thurlbeck felt the public interest justified his actions.

Saunders asked if, when Thurlbeck phoned him on 21 July 2004, he had prefaced his hacking confession by telling his boss "I have done something terrible". "He didn't use the word terrible," said Coulson.

"Weren't you concerned that other people in the newsdesk weren't having the same wrong view?" Saunders asked. "No," Coulson replied.

"Neville Thurlbeck is a senior reporter who considered that he was justified in hacking the voicemail of Kimberly Fortier," Saunders asked of the hacking of Blunkett's mistress at the time. "He was wrong," said Saunders. "Yes," replied Coulson.

"Was there not a risk that other people on the newsdesk were doing exactly the same thing because they also got it wrong?"

"It was a risk, I felt, they, rightly or wrongly, they would bring it to my attention of the lawyer or me," said Coulson.

If that was the case, why didn't he do something about it, the judge asked.

"In hindsight, I sincerely wish I had, but I did put in place the school of excellence," he said referring to a training course journalists were required to take on the paper.